Like fishes need water
by Muchleft-unsaid
Summary: "The fish isn't going to risk losing the water -" "Why not?" Now that was a challenge. "Because fishes can't live without water." Because Tess is too brilliant to die that way, and Oliver is too perfect with her. Tollie fic.


**This is my first attempt at fanfiction, and I present to you a short Tollie one-shot! The first part is my own version of S09E19, when Chloe and Tess were trapped in Watchtower. The rest happens after Tess *coughs* gets stabbed *coughs*.**

* * *

/Chloe's perspective/

"Paint my ideals however you want, but you and yours don't trust people anymore than I do," Tess said flatly. "This entire building was programmed to prevent anyone from getting close to you."

I didn't reply. I was staring at Watchtower, the place I treat more as home, and its not a loving gaze. Damn Tess and her perceptiveness for shining a new light on this place.

She stayed silent for a couple of moments.

"If there's a chance for one of us to escape, take it and go," Tess said suddenly.

I gave her a sharp glance.

"We're dead either way, but if one of us were to survive I'll rather it be you, because then I'll die knowing Oliver wouldn't suffer," she said with a harsh laugh. It verged on a sob.

"You've got two more minutes of air left and you're thinking about Oliver?" _You're willing to give up your life for Oliver?_

"Aren't you?"

I couldn't answer that.

"Don't worry, I'm not going to steal him away or anything, if I make it out alive," she added lightly, but I didn't miss the note of absurd bitterness in her voice.

"He's not going to leave you – with you he has a purpose. I wish I could have given him that," the last part came out as a whisper. "And it kills me, because you have everything right in front of you and you can't even see it," she looked at me, defeat and exhaustion written all over her face.

It was about then that I realised what I had to do – leave Oliver before he was too deeply involved with me and more urgently, keep Tess alive. That was about all that I could for him.

/Oliver's perspective/

Her pale lifeless face stared up at me, gazing into my soul with the intensity only she quite so manages, stabbing, twisting and slicing everything apart like the sword in her gut. A hand draped over the edge, it could have looked as though she simply tripped if not for her stationary body, not even the slightest, merciful twitch.

Merciless, I thought wryly, the word tasting dry beneath the surface of unnoticed tears, mingling irrevocably with the mocking rain.

"Mercy," I whispered. It sounded hollow, almost ghostly.

It sounded ethereal.

She had, after all, become a mere, floating spirit, up and around with all the souls I broke and buried so...mercilessly.

I broke her, long ago. And now I was burying her.

What difference separated her from the rest? From those I killed, those I killed to save her, her who I eventually killed?

"Mercy," I whispered again, fingers flitting across her familiar face. My fleeting touch on her cheek only seemed to double confirm her very solid presence. No doubt she was lying in my arms. She just wasn't there.

Her lids were shut, covering those wide, expressive eyes, once so frightened and young, now so weary and used.

I smiled, bland and meaningless. I liked how her name sounded on my lips.

"Mercy," I mouthed one last time.

"Shut up and get me to a hospital," she whispered back, her voice broken and beaten, stripped bare of her composure.

I jumped, and stared at the supposedly dead body. _Shit._

"So, your half brother, the same brother who your father attempted to cut your heart out for, stabs you in the gut with a sword and leaves you bleeding to death on the office floor, and you're thinking about going back to work for him," I summarized with a deadpan expression.

"I wiped his memory," was all the response I elicited from her. She didn't even glance up from her laptop.

"You don't even need the money! You can just work at the Watchtower like Chloe does –"

"Yes, but Chloe's more or less married to you whereas I am not. Which, in case it hasn't occurred to you, means I do not have a billionaire to fund me for the rest of my life," Tess snapped impatiently.

I kept my forlorn gaze to myself. She had been so near to where Chloe is, so close to my heart when I pushed her away. I lost her. Then Chloe came into the picture but goddamn, I still love Mercy.

Clark dropped by the hospital on the second day Tess got admitted. Rather than watching her, he was watching the way I busied myself around the hospital bed, positioning Tess's belongings the way she had when we were living together. I never knew I still remembered all those little details from near to a decade ago.

"Oliver. What's going on between you and Tess?" Clark asked finally when I eventually settle down. I shot him a quizzical glance. "I've never seen you fuss over someone as much as you just did," he persisted, waving a hand in the direction of the bed, where Tess's sleeping form laid.

I froze for a second. Neither of us has addressed that outright.

"Nothing," I lied.

There was always a gap in our relationship, I had to admit. I would never acknowledge it to anyone else, but both Tess and I knew it and we never spoke about it. Yet every single time that kidnap was mentioned, however unintentionally, briefly or indirectly, Tess would glance up so sharply and when I do manage to catch her eyes, it killed me to see the flash of agony and guilt in her eyes, ripping her apart inside beneath her unwavering stoic facade. She doesn't flinch, her voice doesn't shake, her train of thought doesn't get interrupted, but her vulnerability would resurface. In that one second, I could see that scared yet determined, freshly graduated little girl I rescued all those years ago. That killed me even more.

Then Tess landed herself in the hospital with a stab wound through her gut and I think I really did die.

A part of me wanted to turn rogue just to snap Lex's neck in two bloody halves with my bare hands, consequences be damned. Another part of me wanted to slap Tess for insisting on accepting LuthorCorp's offer of returning as Executive Director. Yet I do neither and instead find myself standing in Tess's office in the Daily Planet. Well.

"If I don't weave a decent enough cover story and Lex decides to stab me again, my death is on your hands," Tess informed me, one eyebrow arched. That one line from her got me running errands.

"Lex's work journal as well as mine are in the top left drawer, the plain white notebooks bound by thread. Stay away from the brown leather bound one," her tone dropped to a warning tone that I knew too well to mess with.

Well, I thought, vaguely amused - how had she phrased it? Oliver wants what Oliver can't have. I picked up what looked like a planner and let it fall to the bookmarked page.

_What hurts more is that the night before Oliver dropped in on us on that forsaken island, I begged Megan not to leave me. She wrapped her freezing hands around mine and promised me that if she would face everything with me, even death. We both cried plenty that day, and I shed them both in desperation and gratitude to have someone like Megan in my life._

_Yet she left and I left her behind. Sheer karma took Oliver away, and working with him reminds me of that. Working with Lois, and Chloe, imprints it on my mind. It reminds me of how I stopped deserving anyone._

I flipped what I realised was her diary shut, my fingers skating over what felt disturbingly like the creases of a blotch of tear on the worn page, though it could have been my own shaking hands. I've found the gap.

I thought I had broke her, but I was wrong. I shattered her. Instead of being that one person I promised would never leave her, I ran and never looked back, ashamed of the vulnerable state I left her in. There was no mystery why she jumped ships so abruptly, away from him and onboard LuthorCorp's voyage. For everything that's happened to her, I'm at least half responsible.

Chloe handed me our marriage certificate, taped together in the middle.

"I declare this invalid," she said with a careful smile. I stared at her in confusion with a frown. "We're friends, Oliver. Best friends. Somewhere along the line, we got confused. This is me straightening things out."

I stared at her some more.

"You're in love with Tess," she stated simply. "And I know her – I know she never got over you. I owe her too much to keep the two of you apart."

"Ch-Chloe," I stammered, unsure what to make of the situation. It would seem a little rude to rejoice, even though my heart had started an absurd routine of handstands and claps.

She just smiled. I searched for a trace of pain in those eyes of hers, but there was only pride. "Do me a favour?" she asked. I nodded.

"Tell me why you love Tess. You'll need this practice, because I've already told Lois that I'm letting you go."

Well, crap.

"Are you sure you're totally, fully, completely comfortable with this topic?" I asked Chloe. She smiled her brightest smile, except that this time round I didn't fall in love with her as I had previously.

I hesitated. I definitely wasn't comfortable with the topic.

"Part of why I fell for her is because Tess…she's so intense, and intensely messed up," I started. "Yeah, that she is," Chloe laughed.

"Yet she tries so hard, so vulnerable yet so strong, so mismatched yet so…perfect, basically," I admitted.

"Clark, all those superheroes, even you, you've only seen things as a hero, only concerned yourselves with issues like saving the world. There's no politics, no bureaucratic bullshit, no dark, complicated past that comes back to haunt you and tear you to fragments every once in awhile, every single time you think you've got things under control, and I've got to face all of that. But I look at Tess and I forget about how messed up I am, because she beats me hands down with all that LuthorCorp business, yet she rose faster than I ever could and that gives me reason to keep going, every single time I see her."

Chloe stared at me, amazed.

I glanced down at my hands awkwardly. "Yeah, that's all I've got."

I stared at her for a long moment. Somehow our actions mirrored each other's - arms crossed, legs crossed and leaning back on the chair.

She really wasn't going to bulge one bit, was she.

I was perfectly used to girls fawning over me, shamelessly flirting. I wasn't quite used to having the roles switched.

"Alright, look, let's put it this way," I said suddenly, breaking the silence and sitting forward in one, swift movement. Mercy raised an eyebrow.

"Chloe is the air -"

"Sounds terribly important," she said sarcastically.

"I'm the fish," I continued, "and you're the water."

Her expression lost some of its sarcasm, though she kept her eyebrow raised. I knew then that I had her attention. If I screw up, I'll never have her attention again.

"So this fish, it was a young and foolish fish. Not to mention good looking," I added after a moment.

"Fishes don't look good -"

"It was perfectly in love with water," I interrupted her this time round, "but it was a stupid fish, so it left water and found air instead because water is intense and air is simple."

"Happily ever after?" Mercy asked flatly, as though she was set on disrupting my story.

"It took a while, but eventually the fish learnt to appreciate the intensity water had. It was choking to death on lightness. It learnt to utilize the oxygen in the water. And so the fish dived into water once again, and never resurfaced to find air," I concluded my story, clapping my hands together a little lamely.

"The fish could also decide to take a break from the water, especially when its resolve is shaken," Tess countered, sounding bored.

"The fish isn't going to risk losing the water -"

"Why not?" Now that was a challenge.

"Because fishes can't live without water."

_And I can't live without you._

/Chloe's perspective/

Tess comes to find me sooner than expected - on the same day I break up with Oliver, in fact. Just seeing her face, I knew I made the right choice.

She walked into my apartment in a complete daze, her eyes uncertain and confused yet with that tinge of innocence and hope of a marvelled child.

She didn't say thank you, but that I did expect. Tess expresses gratitude as often as she squeals, and I say that at risk of offending the definition of often. "Why did you do that?" she asked blankly instead.

"You two look good together. There's no one who complements you quite as much as him and vice versa. "

Tess, still in a daze, nodded. I wondered briefly if she even heard what I said. How the hell did she manage to drive over to the Talon?

"Why did you let him go in the first place? When you stuck so rigidly to a professional relationship?" I asked, for being curious has always been one of my most prominent traits.

The haze in her eyes cleared up instantly, though her eyes had yet to drift back from wherever they were.

"I've grown too accustomed to lying to myself, I started believing them," she whispered more to herself than to me. I smiled. For that split second, I felt just as much as a hero as the rest of the team.

"Oliver before you rush into this relationship, there's something about me that you should know," her voice wavered. She was standing in front of the windows, opting for the view of Metropolis over me. When she turned around, her eyes were already brimming with tears and her eyes begged for my understanding.

I cocked my head to the side. "Unless you're secretly pregnant with some other guy's child, I can't think of anything this drastic."

The sincerity in her face dropped into deadpan sarcasm, with her usual hint of 'get real' in the face of my usual jokes.

I downed her champagne in one gulp and walked around the desk. "What is it?" I said softly, my hand on her shoulder.

"Granted, I hope you don't hate me after this, but if you do…I just want you to know that I understand," she whispered, handing me the file.

I flipped open the cover. "St. Louis Orphanage. Wasn't that where that creepy old lady working for Darkseid came from?" I frowned.

Tess nodded. "I grew up there." An inkling of understanding dawned upon me. This had something to do with her biological parents. Though honestly, how horrid could they be?

LIONEL LUTHOR

PAMELA JENKINS

Alright. Very horrid it is. Which makes Mercy…I glanced at the words on the top row.

LUTESSA LENA LUTHOR

"Lutessa…" I whispered, my finger tracing her name on the laminated cert. I looked at her. Her tears were in free fall now. "And I thought your life was screwed up enough as it was."

That got a laugh out of her. Not knowing what else I could do, I hugged her.

It seemed to calm her down a little, and perhaps convince her that I wasn't about to pack up and run off to disinfect myself from coming into contact with a Luthor.

"Ever heard of the tale of Orion?" I whispered. She shook her head.

"Is this related to the bow you never found?" she asked, her tone subconsciously laced with the slightest bit of sharpness. I laughed.

"He was born to darkness, but he was raised by someone who believed in spreading the light. Eventually, he defeated his father, and left us his bow if his father were to return to Earth."

That caught her attention. "Orion is Darkseid's son?"

"And he turned out just fine." _So did you._

_A/N: Please review!_


End file.
